Cannes (AFP)

Historically under-represented in Cannes, the animated film is back at the festival with notably the two Israeli masters Ari Folman, who became famous for "Waltz with Bachir", and the Japanese Mamoru Hosoda ("Miraï my little sister" ).

Also selected on the Croisette, a French investigative film on mountaineering offers a successful adaptation of a manga by Jiro Taniguchi which will be released this fall, like the other two.

.

"Where's Anne Frank?"

from Ari Folman:

After the failure of his previous film, "The Congress" (2013), a futuristic fable about the rise of hypertechnology in cinema, Ari Folman almost threw in the towel: "I said to myself: no more film from animation for an adult audience It's so difficult to produce that you have to target a large audience, in other words, family, "he told AFP.

With "Waltz with Bachir", a story about the traumatic experience of a young Israeli called up during the Lebanon war, in official competition at Cannes in 2008, the 58-year-old filmmaker had met with considerable success.

For "Where's Anne Frank?", Which took eight years of work and mobilized twelve studios from different countries, Ari Folman tried to limit the risks by drawing inspiration from one of the most famous books of the 20th century, "The diary of Anne Franck ".

Promising, the film nevertheless received a mixed reception in Cannes.

It follows Kitty, an imaginary friend of the Jewish teenager who died in deportation in 1945 and whose logbook describes the last tragic years hidden in Amsterdam under the Nazi occupation.

Navigating between past and present, it offers a reflection on the fate of today's refugees.

.

"Belle" by Mamoru Hosoda:

Already selected in Cannes with "Miraï, ma petite soeur" (Directors' Fortnight) and noticed for "Les enfants loups, Ame & Yuki" (2012), Mamoru Hosoda, 53, returns with the story of an orphan schoolgirl from mother, Suzu, who invents a double life on the internet where she becomes the musical muse of millions of young people.

# photo1

A true graphic explosion with an unbridled color palette, the film, full of romanticism, is a painting of the world of adolescence, its romantic torments, its use of social networks.

It connects songs and action scenes against a background of questioning about the importance of being yourself and the weight of social masks.

This is the third film in which Hosoda embraces the internet issue, already featured in "Digimon" in 2000 and "Summer Wars" (2009): "For the younger generation, the internet already existed when they were born so it's inseparable from their world, it must be accepted, "Mamoru Hosoda told AFP.

"I recognize that there are a lot of negative sides, very nasty attacks on social networks and even harassment (...) but there are also good sides: you can get to know people that you don't can not meet in real life, have shares, solidarity ".

.

"The summit of the gods" by Patrick Imbert:

Praised for "The big bad fox and other tales", César 2018 for best animated film, the designer and director Patrick Imbert abandons the youth universe for a breathtakingly realistic film located between the Alps, Japan and the Himalayas, in the footsteps of a photographer reporter and a dead climber at the top of Everest.

The film adapts in 1h30 the five volumes of the book by Jiro Taniguchi, famous Japanese mangaka who died in 2019. With some exceptions, however, in particular a scene of a helicopter rescue in the Grandes Jorasses, nothing is directly drawn from the boxes of the comic strip .

"I did not use his graphics, for me it is not important, but rather an approach of human characters (...), a tone which often avoids any Manichaeism and fits into the complexity of the characters and which I like at home ", says Patrick Imbert, 43 years old.

Very well documented, the film was worked from photos and the real topology of Everest: "everything is painted as for a normal animated setting", specifies the director who surrounded himself for the composer's soundtrack. Franco-Tunisian Amine Bouhafa, César Award for Best Music in 2015 for "Timbuktu".

© 2021 AFP